Smoke Screen (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 7)

by Linsey Lanier

  The dancer drove a cranberry red Toyota Corolla. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot. She took a look at the police scanner software she had. Nothing even close. So much for Chamber’s promise.

  She had another app that would give her better information. Namely, the Corolla’s current location. What did investigators do before GPS tracking? Stretching her fingers, she grinned to herself. Let’s see if this baby was worth the cash she’d shelled out for it.

  She plugged in Hannah Kaye’s vehicle data and clicked Search.

  The slim blue bar began to move. Slowly.

  Two percent. Five percent. Back down to three.

  Crap. This was going to take forever.

  In the meantime, might as well check out the background on Hannah’s parents. She switched windows and opened another piece of software. She entered the data for the parents and this time was rewarded with a quick response.

  The personal data for Charles and Jean Kaye was displayed on her screen in all its glory. Charles, age fifty-one, had been a top-ranking sales manager for a medical equipment company for years. Travelled all over the country, made the big bucks, spent lavishly on a nice home. Looked like Hannah was their only child. And Jean…? Not much about her. Stay at home mom? Wait a minute.

  Jean Kaye had died three years ago of lung cancer. Charles had gotten remarried last year to a thirty-two year old woman named Athena West. That must have been who Miranda had talked to on the phone. Not much about her, here either.

  Social media was the place to go, Miranda decided.

  She logged on to the popular site Mackenzie and Wendy frequented and entered the woman’s name. Her page popped up immediately. This was Athena West?

  Wow.

  In front of a gorgeous sandy beach a leggy beauty was stretched out in a silvery swimsuit that left little to the imagination. Long golden hair that glowed under rays of the setting sun draped over breasts that would make any man drool.

  With one hand, she balanced herself. In the other she held a champagne flute. Her tongue seemed to move seductively over her upper lip in a come-up-and-see-me-sometime pose.

  So this was Hannah Kaye’s stepmother.

  The bio said she was a model. Miranda wondered for what. It also said her interests were skiing, fine wine, and swinging.

  Wait. Swinging?

  A few clicks and eyefuls later, Miranda had the answer. Charles and Athena Kaye were active members of a partner-swapping club. They seemed to frequent it regularly. The club met at various resorts, members’ home, and local hotels for periodical partner swapping. For a reasonable monthly fee you could screw anybody in the club you wanted.

  Feeling a little queasy Miranda sat back in her chair. No wonder Hannah didn’t mind listing her parents on her employment record for Exótico. She knew they didn’t care if she worked in a strip club. From Athena’s attitude on the phone, she didn’t seem to care what Hannah did. Or where she was.

  Miranda tapped her fingers on her desk.

  Had Hannah been close to her real mother? Three years wasn’t a lot of time to get over the loss of a loved one. Was Hannah’s disappearance a desperate cry for attention from her father? A way to lash out against her swinging step-mother?

  More unanswered questions.

  A sizzle came from the corner. The coffee. She’d forgotten all about it.

  Trying to sort out all she’d learned, Miranda made her way over to the pot and poured a cup into another cute kitten mug.

  She’d just sat down with it when her cell rang.

  She looked at the display. Santiago. Good grief.

  Better answer or he might send someone to break her legs. “Hello?”

  “You said you would keep me posted.” His dark voice sent another shiver through her.

  “I said I’d let you know when I got a break.”

  “What does that mean? What happened with the hombre?”

  “Hombre?”

  “The boyfriend you were checking out this morning. I have not heard from you all day, Miranda.”

  Taking her time to respond she sipped her coffee.

  “Miranda?”

  “He’s not our guy.”

  “Our guy?”

  “He has nothing to do with Nitro’s disappearance.”

  There was a long icy pause. “How do you know?”

  She let out a long breath. “They broke up a week ago. He’s alibied for the entire time Hannah’s been missing.” She certainly wasn’t going to tell him the details. And especially not that she’d gotten Chambers involved.

  She could almost hear the rumble in Santiago’s chest. He wasn’t buying it. “I can send someone to question him further.”

  Miranda could just imagine what that meant. A vision popped into her head of one of Santiago’s lackeys beating the pale, skinny Marty Jenkins to a pulp.

  And it pissed her off. “Are you telling me I don’t know how to do my job?”

  “If I thought that I would not have hired you.”

  “Then believe me. The boyfriend wasn’t involved.”

  She listened to him breathe a long time. At last he said, “Very well. What is your next step?”

  At least she’d gotten him off the boyfriend thing. “I’m going through some standard checks. I’m not finished yet.”

  “What sort of checks?”

  She fisted a hand and rolled her eyes. “Hospitals for one thing.”

  “Hospitals? Do you think Nitro was in an accident?”

  “I don’t think anything yet. It’s something I have to check.”

  She had to get him off the phone. It was a waste of time. She didn’t have anything else to give him and she never would with him breathing down her neck like this.

  On second thought, maybe the pressure was just what she needed.

  Suddenly she remembered peeking through the curtain during the show at Exótico last night and the pieces clicked.

  Both the tall dancer named Dolly and the nice dancer named Crystal with the silly stage name of Bambi had claimed a man in the audience had come to see Hannah aka Nitro every night for a week.

  Crystal said he was in love with Nitro. Drooled all over himself when she performed. She said he was good-looking. Dolly said she’d seen Hannah talking to him in the parking lot. The dude had sounded like the boyfriend, except for the good-looking part. Miranda had dismissed that. She’d been sure it had been the boyfriend at the club. But Marty Jenkins hadn’t been there. Not last week, anyway. He’d been studying with his Business major friend who was flunking Calculus.

  Marty’s words from that morning came back to her. Hannah had broken up with him last week. She’d said she’d found somebody else.

  “I think it was a guy who came to see her at the club.”

  Miranda had thought he’d been lying. A breezy chill fluttered down her spine.

  Marty wasn’t lying.

  She needed more information on that dude in the front row table. Somebody at the club ought to know something.

  “Carlos,” she said into the phone.

  “Yes, Miranda?”

  “Can you get your staff together for a meeting tonight?”

  “What for?”

  “I need to question them. It’ll be faster if they’re together.”

  “Very well.” He sounded relieved she was taking an action he could understand. “Can you come to the club early? I am meeting with them myself before the show tonight. My monthly pep talk.”

  She couldn’t imagine Carlos Santiago giving a pep talk but that was irrelevant. “I’ll be there.”

  “I will see you then.”

  She clicked off and turned to her computer screen. She had nothing to go on about the mystery man yet but a vague description of him and his car. Nothing she could search.

  But by tonight, she would.

  Chapter Twenty

  Parker stepped out of his office and headed down the hall along the cube bank, his temples pounding. For six hours he’d gone through that list of television st
ations twice, calling every last one of them, using every charm cell in his body to find anyone who might have called looking for Miranda either after her Las Vegas press conference or the incident in Lake Placid.

  Once again he’d come up empty-handed.

  Scanning the aisles, he headed for the break room. The workday was at an end, the smells and sounds of coffee brewing had given way to the pop and fizz of soda cans, which in turn had given way to the snap of laptop lids and a yawn and a stretch before heading home.

  And yet he heard voices down one corridor.

  He took it, moving past the empty cubes to a corner near Miranda’s old space. There was no activity there. He’d told Gen to turn her cube into storage. He couldn’t bear the sight of it.

  He made another turn and found Dave Becker lounging over the side of the cube belonging to Detective Curt Holloway. Holloway had his feet on his desk.

  Opposite Holloway, Detective Janelle Wesson sat in the guest chair, her shapely legs crossed at the knee. She wore a conservative business suit of robin’s egg blue that went well with her long, cinnamon red hair. The determined spunk Wesson brought to her cases showed in her alert posture. It was a trait Parker both encouraged in his employees and respected.

  “I think you’re right, Becker,” Wesson said.

  “Right about what?” Parker asked.

  All three jumped together. Dave shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Wesson uncrossed her legs and sat up even straighter.

  Holloway put his feet down and adjusted his sport coat and tie. “Hello, sir. Becker here was just whining about hitting a dead-end on the assignment you gave him.”

  Parker studied their faces. They were hiding something. Just now he didn’t care what it was. “Exactly where I am as well.”

  Dave hung his head as if in shame. “Bummer.”

  Parker turned to Dave. “Have you told them what we’re doing?”

  “Not all of it.”

  If two heads were better than one, four were even better. Parker took Miranda’s phone out of his pocket and scrolled to the insidious text messages.

  He handed it to Holloway. “Miranda started receiving these about two and a half months ago. We’re trying to find whoever sent them.”

  Holloway took the phone and squinted down at the screen. “These sound pretty ominous, sir.” He handed the phone to Wesson.

  Her red brows drew together in serious consideration as she studied the texts. “Creepy.”

  Parker took the phone from her and explained the progress, or lack thereof, he and Dave had made so far. “Do you two have any thoughts to contribute?”

  Wesson turned to him in her chair. “You mean as a theory of how this guy got Steele’s phone number?”

  Parker nodded.

  She thought a moment. “The Agency’s website?”

  “Dave has already checked that out.”

  “I haven’t found any unusual activity,” Dave offered. “But it’s hard to tell.”

  Holloway shoved back the shock of light brown hair that habitually fell over his eyes. “It could have been a wrong number.”

  Dave shook his head. “Not three times in a row.”

  “But they stopped after the third text, right?”

  Parker drew in a patient breath. “They did. And you’re right, Curt. It may have been a misdialed number. I’m working off the worst case scenario.”

  Holloway nodded and fell silent.

  Wesson reached for a can of soda on the corner of Holloway’s desk. “We have people coming and going in here all the time. What if he just walked in?”

  “You mean a client?” Holloway asked.

  “Or someone posing as a client.”

  “You mean somebody might have come in here and strolled right up to Steele’s desk?”

  “Or asked Sybil for her number.”

  Holloway frowned in disbelief. “That would presume a pretty underhanded motive.”

  Wesson scowled back at him. “That’s what Mr. Parker just said he was going for. Besides, those text messages support that theory. If I’d gotten them, I’d be looking over my shoulder.”

  Something Parker knew Miranda had not done.

  Dave’s eyes took on a faraway look. “What if somebody was going to try to get money out of Steele and chickened out?”

  “All plausible theories,” Parker said. “We simply need to figure out which one is correct.”

  “Simply,” Holloway said with a smirk. Then his head shot up. “Hey, doesn’t Sybil keep a record of visitors?”

  Parker nodded. “She has a sign in sheet, yes. And a call log.” But if Miranda had received an incoming call from a stranger, she would have been suspicious. It would have been the first lead she’d have used to track down those calls.

  An in-person visitor with an ulterior motive was a possibility he hadn’t considered. And with the dozens of clients who had come through the Agency’s doors over the past months, it could very well be a viable possibility.

  But how could a stranger access Miranda’s phone?

  She had been careless with it when she first got her cell phone, but once she became a full-fledged investigator she was never without it. Never.

  Except…Parker remembered a time during her convalescence when Miranda had grown restless and had stubbornly come into the office for the day. Over his protests. He had been right. The strain had proved to be too much for her and she’d gone home—and left her cell phone behind. He remembered her begging him to bring it to her. And he had purposely pretended to forget so she could rest. She’d suffered a gunshot wound and had almost died. She needed quiet. The landline in the mansion was enough for emergencies.

  He’d managed to keep it away from her for two weeks. But when she threatened to come back in to the office to get it, he’d brought it home. He smiled at the memory of her delight when he’d handed it to her. When had that been? January? February? And then another thought came to him.

  Parker scanned the walls of the open space. “I had surveillance cameras installed here some years ago when some cash went missing.”

  “They’re still working,” Dave volunteered. “I’ve seen Fry check them every so often.”

  “That far back might have been purged.”

  “I don’t think so. We have a couple of terabytes of storage.”

  “Let’s go check that out,” Parker told him. He turned to Holloway and Wesson. “In the meantime, would you two talk to Sybil about her logs?”

  Wesson got to her feet. “Sure. I think she’s still here.”

  Holloway hopped up as well, eager to help. “I saw her doing inventory in the back. We can find her.”

  Parker appreciated their enthusiasm. “Thank you. Let me know what you learn.”

  “Will do.” Holloway saluted and went off with Wesson to hunt for the receptionist.

  Parker turned to head back to the lab with Dave. He was nearly around the corner when he spotted Gen at the end of the aisle. She’d changed from business clothes into jeans and wore a form fitting green top that brought out the ashen blond of her short hair. Her demeanor was still every ounce a professional. She reminded him so much of her mother at times.

  Gen carried a clipboard in one hand. Holloway had been correct. Gen and Sybil were staying late to take stock of office supplies.

  She glanced at her watch and gave him a derisive look. “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  Lifting a brow, he came to a halt in front of her. “Working.”

  She glanced at Dave and made an even odder face. “Don’t you want to get going?”

  He gave her an indulgent smile. “Why should I want to do that?”

  “You know.” She moved her eyes back and forth, then lifted the clipboard to the side of her mouth. “That thing we talked about?”

  He had no idea what she meant. And as much as he loved her, she was impeding his progress at the moment. “I’m sorry, Gen. I don’t know what you mean.”

  She rolled her eyes and whispe
red in his ear. “It’s date night.”

  “What?”

  “I set up a date for you tonight. Didn’t you get my text?”

  Parker took out his own cell. Apparently he’d been so engrossed in his project, he’d missed it. Gen had arranged for a date at Tamarind Gardens at seven-thirty tonight. His first inclination was to cancel. He wanted to follow through on this new lead.

  But Gen’s expression told him she’d be sorely disappointment if he did. Besides, he’d agreed to the date to turn over a new leaf. And at the moment, he didn’t care if Dave knew about it. Or if through his wife, Joan, the news got back to Miranda.

  “Who am I meeting at Tamarind Gardens?” he asked Gen.

  She gave Dave another awkward glance, then said. “It’s a secret.”

  Parker raised a brow. “A blind date?”

  “Yes,” Gen echoed, folding her arms defensively. “A blind date. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Not exactly what he was hoping for, but he refused to disappoint his daughter.

  From the corner of his eye, Parker caught Dave’s stunned expression. Ignoring it he turned to his employee. “Dave, can you get started on that project while I step out for a few hours? I’ll be back later.”

  “I—I—.” Dave’s jaw went up and down until he shook himself out of his shock . “I mean, sure, Mr. Parker,” he said finally. “I’ll just call Joan and tell her I’ll be late.”

  “I appreciate it. Let me know the minute you find anything.”

  Dave nodded vigorously. “Will do, sir.”

  Parker turned back to Gen. “I assume you’ll be staying late as well?”

  “As long as it takes. We’re behind in inventory.”

  “Then I’ll see you both later.” And with that Parker turned the opposite way and headed toward the exit.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tamarind Gardens had been one of Miranda’s favorite dining spots, Parker thought, as he stepped into the establishment’s understated foyer.

  She’d loved their extra spicy sausages, he recalled, breathing in the aroma of basil and ginger from the five-star Taiwanese kitchen. He wondered if Gen had taken his history here with his former wife into consideration when she’d planned this date.

  Perhaps that had been her intention.